Ash Wednesday: Naming the Bitterness We Carry

 

Symbol: Maror (Bitter Herbs)

Text: Exodus 1:8–14

Good evening, and welcome to this Ash Wednesday service. Tonight, we begin a journey—a forty-day pilgrimage toward the cross and the empty tomb. But we do not begin with celebration. We begin with honesty. We begin with ashes. We begin with bitterness.

On the night of Passover, Jewish families gather for the Seder meal. They eat unleavened bread, drink cups of wine, and tell the story of deliverance. And they eat maror—bitter herbs. Horseradish or romaine lettuce, sharp and pungent, bringing tears to the eyes. This is not an accidental part of the meal. It is commanded. They must taste the bitterness. It is a visceral, bodily memory of the bitterness of slavery. Before they taste the sweetness of freedom, they must remember the sharp sting of bondage.

Tonight, Ash Wednesday is our maror. It is our collective, holy pause to taste the bitterness we carry, before we walk the road to grace.

Hear the Word of God from Exodus, chapter 1, verses 8 through 14:

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

The text is stark: “They made their lives bitter.” This is more than hardship. It is a calculated, systematic infusion of bitterness into the soul of a people. It is the bitterness of injustice, of dehumanizing labor, of hope deferred, of cries that seem to hit a ceiling of brass.

We are not slaves in Egypt. But we are not strangers to bitterness.

• The bitterness of our own making: The sharp aftertaste of words we cannot take back. The regret of choices that wounded others and isolated us. The resentment we nurse, the envy we sip like cheap wine, the pride that turns our hearts to stone. This is the bitterness of sin—not just “breaking rules,” but breaking relationship, with God, with each other, with our own selves.
• The bitterness inflicted upon us: The pain of betrayal, the scar of abandonment, the weight of grief that sits on your chest in the morning. The anxiety that gnaws, the depression that colors the world gray. The memory of a cruel word, an abusive hand, a system that overlooked you. “They made their lives bitter.” We know this story.
• The bitterness of the world: The endless news cycle of war and suffering. The bitter divisions in our communities, our churches, our families. The cry of the oppressed that echoes the cry of Israel.

And what do we do with this bitterness? We are masters of avoidance. We rush past it. We numb it with noise, with busyness, with substances, with shallow optimism. We spiritualize it: “Just have faith!” We swallow it down, where it curdles into cynicism, or hardens into hatred, or metastasizes into despair.

But God, in the Passover—and God, in this Ash Wednesday liturgy—commands a different way: “Taste it. Name it.”

Maror must be eaten. Ashes must be smudged on your forehead. You cannot think about bitterness. You must taste it. You cannot glance at mortality. You must wear its mark: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Why this strange, painful honesty? Why begin Lent here?

First, because we cannot be healed of a disease we deny. A doctor cannot treat “I’m fine.” She needs the truth: “It hurts here. This is the symptom.” Lent is our spiritual triage. We name the bitterness—the sin, the sorrow, the brokenness—not to wallow, but to present it. To bring it out of the shadowy recesses of our soul and into the holy, if frightening, light of God’s presence. Psalm 51, the Ash Wednesday psalm, models this: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me… You desire truth in the inward being.”

Second, because unnamed bitterness becomes identity. If we do not name our resentment, it becomes who we are—a resentful person. If we do not name our grief, it becomes the permanent filter for our lives. If we do not name our sin, it becomes our master. By naming it before God, we say, “This is a burden I carry, but it is not my name. My name is ‘Beloved, Dust.’” The ashes are the great equalizer. We are all mortal. We all carry bitterness. We all need mercy.

Third, and most importantly, because God meets us in the truth, not in the pretense. God did not meet Israel after they had “gotten over” Egypt. He met them in their bitter cry. “The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning…” (Exodus 2:23-24). Our bitter cry is not an obstacle to God’s presence; it is the very prayer that draws Him near. He comes to a people who know they are slaves, not to a people pretending to be free.

So tonight, we take the maror. We name the bitterness.

Perhaps for you tonight, it is the bitterness of a failing marriage, or a fractured friendship.
Perhaps it is the bitterness of addiction’s chains.
Perhaps it is the bitterness of loneliness that has lasted for years.
Perhaps it is the bitterness of your own quick temper, your own judgmental spirit, your own failure to love.
Perhaps it is the bitterness of a loss so profound you have no words.

In the silence of your heart, name it. In the honesty of this moment, taste it.

And then, hear the invitation: Bring it before God. You do not bring it to be shamed. You bring it to be seen, heard, and ultimately, redeemed. The ashes on your forehead are not a sign of despair, but of hope. They are a marker saying, “I have told the truth about my condition. Now I am eligible for grace.” They are the starting line of Lent, which leads us on a path through the wilderness—not around our bitterness, but through it—straight to a hill called Golgotha. There, on the cross, Jesus will take the full, bitter cup of human sin and suffering, and drink it down to the dregs. He will swallow our bitterness so we can taste His sweetness.

Tonight, we begin with truth: “You are dust.” We begin with the taste of maror. We name the bitterness we carry.

Do not rush past this moment. This honest naming is the first, most sacred step toward the joy of Easter. For the God who heard the bitter cries in Egypt is the God who hears your cry tonight. And He is the God who leads enslaved people through sea and wilderness into freedom.

Come. Receive the ashes. Name the bitterness. And know that the journey you begin tonight in honest confession ends at an empty tomb, where mercy has the final, everlasting word.